As legal representatives of Samsung and Apple filter out from Dusseldorf's regional court, it's Samsung who are the happier, as the preliminary injunction that Apple filed against the Korean firm's Galaxy Tab 10.1N (itself a design around of the banned Tab 10.1), has been denied.

The court found that Samsung's re-design of the Galaxy Tab was far enough removed from Apple's products to go on sale legally, without infringing any patents.

Fertig!

Even though Apple previously won a community-based design injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, it can be said that overall Samsung can be happy with the results of the two cases.

The nature of that previous injunction is unique to German law, meaning that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is banned only in Germany and the new 10.1N version can be sold there in its stead.

Florian Mueller of Foss Patents argues that this casts a favourable outlook for Motorola in its upcoming cases against Apple.

"Today's ruling is also good news for Motorola Mobility, whose Xoom tablet Apple is attacking with the same community design in Dusseldorf," he said.

"If even the Galaxy Tab 10.1N steers clear of infringement, it's going to be quite difficult for Apple to win the Xoom case."

War nur spass

Mueller also added that, despite this particular chapter now being resolved, the case is far from securely closed.

"It's important to understand that today's decision is merely the denial of a preliminary injunction," he warned.

"In parallel to all those efforts to have different Samsung tablets banned as a result of fast-track proceedings, Apple continues to assert four different design-related rights against ten Samsung smartphones and five Samsung tablets, including the ones against which Apple sought preliminary injunctions."

He went on to estimate that it could be a full year before these cases are fully resolved.

[source: Foss Patents]